By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2024-12-22 18:36:33 | Updated at 2024-12-23 00:17:43
5 hours ago
Utah’s new senator is taking a page from predecessor Mitt Romney and pledging to be an independent voice in the upper chamber and not necessarily a “rubber stamp” for President-elect Donald Trump.
Sen.-elect John Curtis (R-Utah), 64, on Sunday foreshadowed that he isn’t afraid to be a maverick when it comes to weighing Trump’s cabinet picks or mulling spending packages that the president-elect may seek to push through.
“It’s very important to me that President Trump is successful. I want to see him wildly successful, and I’ll be supportive of him when he’s talking about inflation and the economy and everything like that,” Curtis told ABC News’ “This Week.”
“But that doesn’t mean there won’t be moments when I disagree with him,” he said. “I do have my own mind, and I’m not a rubber stamp. My stamp is the stamp of the state of Utah.”
The Utah sen.-elect was reportedly one of at least four GOP senators who soured on Trump’s pick of former firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to serve as US attorney general.
Curtis had indicated that he is still harboring some apprehension over several of Trump’s other picks, too, including Department of Defense Secretary-designee Pete Hegseth.
The senator-elect, asked about whether he has resolved his issues over Hegseth, said, “No. … They remain unresolved.
“And I shouldn’t try to resolve them until I have this big broad canvas of information about him.
“Anybody who wants to give me heat for doing my job, bring it on,” Curtis added. “This is my job. It’s my constitutional responsibility.”
Curtis also said he wants assurances from FBI Director-designee Kash Patel that he will ensure the bureau is apolitical.
The Beehive State pol insists that he is a “normal” Republican rather than a MAGA one. During the 2024 primary process, Curtis prevailed over Trump-backed Trent Staggs in locking down the GOP nod for Senate.
He hailed his predecessor, retiring Sen. Romney, as “true to who he is,” rejecting conservative ire against the 2012 GOP presidential nominee for going against party lines from time to time.
“A lot of people ask me [for specifics] when I say I’m sometimes going to have my differences with the president,” Curtis reflected. “I’ll just tell you from my previous service with him at the same time, it’s spending.
“We have to do far more to rein in our spending. And that is a big deal in Utah. That’s what my constituents expect me to do.”
Romney recently turned heads by voting against the last-minute deal brokered Friday to avert a government shutdown, something that he described as a protest vote of “the absurd way this is to run government.”
Republicans are poised to have a 53 to 47 majority in the upper chamber next year. Trump has been hopeful that the Senate won’t be too much of an obstacle for him to staff his next administration.
